The present invention relates in general to methods for separating biological fluids, such as blood, blood components or other biological fluids, into one or more components.
The separation of biological fluid such as whole blood, or blood components into its constituent components for various applications is well known. Many commercially available separation systems (commonly called “apheresis” systems) are based on principles of centrifugation, which separates the fluid components according to density. Various apheresis systems are known that employ centrifugal separation of blood or blood components including the CS-3000®, Amicus® and ALYX® separators marketed by Baxter Healthcare Corporation of Deerfield, Ill., the Spectra® and Trima® separators by Gambro BCT of Lakewood, Colo., the AS104 from Fresenius Homecare of Redmond, Wash., and the V-50 and other models from Haemonetics Corporation of Braintree, Mass.
Although the need may vary with application and components, available centrifugal blood processing systems employ various ways to collect the separated components from the centrifugal field with as little presence or contamination as possible from other components located in the centrifugal field. There is continuing desire to develop more efficient and versatile ways which minimize such presence or contamination during separation and collection of one or more blood components.